Pecking Order
by purdledooturt
Summary: Morgan wants to know if time travel has messed with the pecking order between siblings.


**Pecking Order**

Prompt: Morgan wanted to know if the time travel has messed with the pecking order between the siblings.

Notes: Assumes Robin (F) marries Chrom and produces Morgan (M) and Lucina. You know – like EVERY SINGLE PLAYTHROUGH I DO.

* * *

"Lucina?"

She dreaded that tone. It wasn't that she hated her brother – in fact, she loved him very, very much despite the fact that he doesn't seem to remember her or know her as well as he used to – but it was the tone of voice that warned her that he was about to ask something silly. Well, never silly – sometimes he would use that tone of voice and ask her about their childhood, or what their parents had been like. She grunted in acknowledgement as she continued to write down the events of the future, trying to calibrate herself. From the corner of the tent their father sat, polishing _his_ Falchion, listening quietly to his children.

"How does the pecking order work now?" Morgan asked from his perch on top of a crate.

She paused, and so did Chrom, and both of them looked at Morgan in confusion. "What pecking order?"

Her brother, whose legs were crossed and whose robes were resting gently and loosely against his skinnier form, looked back at her with an expectant look on his face. As if he couldn't believe she didn't get it immediately.

"You're here," he stated, "and you're my older sister. I'm your younger brother. But what about Lucina in the castle?"

He seemed to have missed the flat look she had given him, which she thought was a shame. "You mean the real Lucina?" she joked, with a slight edge in her voice. Morgan didn't look apologetic at all – just confused, and mildly upset, and she shook her head and apologised with a smile. She didn't really like remembering she wasn't the _right_ Lucina. At least, not right now.

"Lucina," her father's voice came warningly from his corner of the tent where he gave her a look which was a mix of disappointment (he never approved of her self-deprecating humour) and sadness. "None of that."

"Sorry, father," she said.

Morgan shook his head. "If Lucina is you, and I'm older than _her_ right now, does that mean you're both the eldest and the youngest child? Am I both older _and_ younger than you?" He paused to think about it. He frowned. A headache seemed to start setting in.

The question stumped her, and it seemed to stump her father as well.

"Well," she began, before she stopped. Lucina turned to her father for help, only to see him shrug comically at her. She decided to deflect. "What about the other Morgan?"

He was quick. "He hasn't been delivered yet," he said, as she continued to rack her head for an answer.

"He hasn't even been ordered yet," Chrom muttered under his breath, earning him an embarrassed blush from Lucina as she pursed his lips. Seems she picked that up from him – she looked like a little pufferfish as she turned away, back to her scroll, to hide the redness of her face. "Sorry."

"You should order him soon," Morgan added, completely missing the joke. "I'm only a few years younger than Lucina – it'd be horrible if I didn't get delivered on time."

"What would be horrible?" asked Robin, as she ducked into the tent. She walked over to Chrom and passed him an apple, which he polished against his cape. She then passed apples to Lucina and Morgan as well, before leaning against the table Lucina was writing at. She smiled gratefully at her mother who smiled back sweetly, before tapping Lucina's cheeks with her finger as a hello.

Morgan immediately became reinvigorated. "Mother," he said, "finally – a member of authority who can answer my question." Chrom choked on his piece of apple in the corner.

"Your father is here," Robin said, rising to her feet as Chrom coughed away. She looked at her son in confusion. "Isn't he authority?"

"He doesn't know the answer either," he explained simply, making Chrom nod in agreement as he finally got his pipes sorted. "It's best to ask you so we can decide once and for all. And since you're a grandmaster tactician, you will probably know what to do!"

She gave him a look which he took as cue to continue, and he repeated his question. Lucina leaned back to watch him, her work momentarily forgotten, as he spoke. There's childlike innocence in his eyes (there always seems to be something childlike in his eyes, no matter what he did), which shined through. "If Lucina is here and older than me, and in the castle and younger than me, does that mean she's both older and younger than me at the same time?"

Robin was quick to answer. "Yes. Technically."

"I see," Morgan tapped his chin. Lucina and Chrom looked at Robin with surprise at the speed of her answer. "So, how does the pecking order work?"

This confused the grandmaster. "What pecking order?"

"If I'm younger than her, then she gets to boss me around," he said, becoming animated and using his hands to get his point across. "But if I'm older than her, then I get to boss her around."

Lucina's eyebrow rose.

Chrom stopped. "Yes," he said, his thumb and crooked pointer finger finding his chin, "how _does_ that work?"

"You're technically younger than Lucina and older than Lucina at the same time," came the explanation. "I'm going to say Lucina," she placed her hand on Lucina's shoulder, "can boss you around. And you can boss baby Lucina around."

"Won't it get confusing?" he asked, shifting in his seat, full attention now turned to his darling mother. "If you called for Lucina to do chores and neither answer?"

Robin's eyes glinted in mischief. "Which is why I'll always just call _you._ "

"That won't work either," he continued, unwavering from his line of logic, "because when the new Morgan comes you'll have the same problem. At the moment we can get away with calling baby Lucina 'Baby', but what about new Morgan?"

"He hasn't been ordered yet," Robin said flatly, earning her a chuckle from Chrom and a groan from Lucina. Secretly, the younger fighter adored her parents' one-ness. Even if it meant they both made the same bad jokes. "We'll just give him a middle name."

"Does baby Lucina have a middle name?"

Robin turned to her daughter. "I don't know," she joked, "do you?"

Lucina shoved her mother lightly. "I do," she said.

"It's Emmeryn," Chrom said, smiling. "Lucina Emmeryn. I guess we can get to calling baby Lucina, 'Emmy'."

Morgan nodded in thought, "yes, it's only logical."

"Is it?"

"Does baby Morgan get to have a middle name?"

Robin paused for thought. "Yes," she answered. "Morgan."

"Morgan… Morgan?" he looked appalled. "That'll definitely make it a hundredfold more confusing!" He tilted his head. "Why would you do that, mother?"

"No!" she said, "I meant, we'll just make baby Morgan have a different first name."

"My sibling will be named after me," he said proudly. "The future best tactician in the world! I mean – second to you, mother."

"Your sibling?" Robin asked, " _I'm naming you after yourself._ "

The gears in his head began to turn as he was stumped at the new line of logic. Lucina could almost physically see them as the twisted and turned to try and find a new patter of movement. Chrom merely frowned in confusion.

"Mother?"

Robin dreaded that tone.


End file.
